The HFF short film WALUD has been submitted for an Academy Award in the Live Action Short Film category. WALUD, by HFF students Daood Alabdulaa (screenplay, director, producer), Louise Zenker (screenplay, director), Henri Nunn (DoP) , Liam Wölfer and Joyce Abou-Zeid (both production) is now on the longlist and in the running for an Oscar® nomination for Best Live Action Short Film / The film qualified for submission after winning the “Best of Fest” grand prize at the L.A. SHORTS International Film Festival in early August 2025 / Around 100 short films from around the world qualify for submission each year / On December 16, the 15 short films that made it onto the shortlist for nominations will be announced / Voting is conducted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which currently has over 10,500 members from all film trades / HFF alumnus Florian Gallenberger won the Oscar® for Best Short Film in 2001 for his HFF graduation film QUIERO SER
Munich, August 2025 – The short film WALUD by students at the University of Television and Film Munich has been submitted for the Academy Award in the Live Action Short Film category. To be eligible for such a submission, films must first qualify by winning awards at so-called Oscar® Qualifying Festivals or winning a Student Oscar® – around 100 films from all over the world achieve this every year. The WALUD team, Daood Alabdulaa (screenplay, director, producer), Louise Zenker (screenplay, director), Henri Nunn (DoP), Liam Wölfer, and Joyce Abou-Zeid (producer), now hopes to make it onto the short list of 15 films, which will be announced in Los Angeles on December 16, 2025. The selection will be made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which now has over 10,500 members, in early December in a preliminary vote (available for 12 of the 24 Academy Award categories).
Daood Alabdulaa: "For us as a student film team, this is a special opportunity that we definitely want to take advantage of. It feels completely crazy because we see ourselves as a bit of an underdog: we are a student production with very limited production resources, and the fact that we are now allowed to compete for the Short Film Oscar® with all these short films is totally surreal. As things stand, we unfortunately don't have the money for a proper campaign and are simply relying on members of the Academy taking an interest in the film and watching it."
Louise Zenker: "WALUD has already been shown and awarded at numerous international festivals – we hope that this broad visibility will help us once again. We have already overcome so many hurdles with WALUD: The film shouldn't even exist – we are the first production from the HFF Munich to have ever filmed in Tunisia, and at the beginning our equipment got stuck in customs, so we had to improvise constantly. It's all the more crazy that this unlikely film is now allowed to go on such a great journey."
WALUD was additionally supported in its creation by the Young Talent Foundation Berlin (Armin Schneider) and the Friends of HFF Munich e.V.
Previous successes of short films from the HFF Munich at the Academy Awards
In recent years, the HFF Munich has won several Student Oscars® and a Short Film Oscar® for productions by its students: 2022 Student Oscar® in gold for ALMOST HOME by Nils Keller and in silver for EIGENHEIM by Welf Reinhard; 2021 Student Oscar® in silver for the graduation film ADISA by Simon Denda; 2016 Student Oscar® in gold for the short film INVENTION OF TRUST by Alex Schaad; 2014 Student Oscar® in gold for the graduation film NOCEBO by Lennart Ruff; 2000 Student Academy Award® for QUIERO SER by Florian Gallenberger (and subsequently also the Short Film Academy Award®); 1994 Student Academy Award® for ABGESCHMINKT by Katja von Garnier.